


Vascular

by maelidify



Series: Space Interludes [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 18+, F/M, elements of soft existential nihilism, space sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 12:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14213250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maelidify/pseuds/maelidify
Summary: In any case, he was waiting, eyes on her, and the space outside was watching.





	Vascular

Even on the worst of days, Emori finds the time to approach the windows— sturdy stubborn glass, calm ponds, a great many things that they seem to be and aren’t— and look down at the ground, which is a round dark thing, a suffering small berry, and experience a fragment of joy that at first felt completely alien to her.  
  
That first week here, she could barely tear herself away. The problems her fascination caused were few, and mainly linked to John's activity compared to her uncharacteristic stillness. She watched how Raven would walk through the sky, with a cord tethering herself to the vessel they were on, and felt herself the vessel, and John floating around her on an invisible tether.  
  
“You don’t feel any of it?” she asked him, one of those first few days. _It_ was the distance, both frightening and ecstatic, between their suffering and the suffering down below. _It_ was the feeling of strange, isolated joy that the ground was so far away and small, and the winks of light further away and smaller but, somewhere, bigger and grander and full of hunger and destruction.  
  
“Sure,” he said, looking out at the window with hardness, and then at her with softness. “Sure.” 

 

* * *

 

 _I want to celebrate being small,_ Emori thought once, and blinked the thought away as rapidly as it had arrived. Then, cautiously, she allowed it back in. She had to be small, on the ground, but in an eroded kind of way. There were parts of herself she had to sand smooth and sharp.  
  
This thought arrived at night while she was trying to sleep. These days, she got enough sleep, in spite of the strange dreams she was sometimes had in the morning. She wasn’t used to rest. John wasn’t either, and sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night shaking or almost screaming, close enough that she could sense it and wake up too and breathe into his shoulder until he calmed down.  
  
It was a night that his body was filled with shivers and he was clutching his throat. She held him. His heart wouldn’t calm. “Shh,” she whispered into his skin, which was damp. “We don’t matter.”  


* * *

  
Once, Emori woke alone. John wasn’t there, so she stood up to wander.   
  
John needed to be alone sometimes. She understood this. But she was drawn to the darkened hallways of the Ark anyway, not quite looking for him so much as just _looking_. The dim generated lights, the faint hum. They were all in the belly of a large beast that was, for some reason, benevolent. Emori had always liked the indifference of machines, but she had never before been so grateful to one.  
  
She found herself outside Harper and Monty’s quarters. She entered. This wasn’t supposed to be possible, but Emori had taught herself how to break the codes belonging any of the rooms months ago. Her two friends were sleeping, so she rummaged through the small cabinet where she knew Harper kept a secret allotment of Monty’s drink until her fingers closed around a small bottle.  
  
Outside, she found one of the windows and sat in front of it cross-legged. Back on the ground, this would be a vulnerable position and she still had some vestiges of restlessness— anyone (who?) outside could see her and her unwrapped hand and attack, attack, attack— but she quietly fought the impulse to hide. She looked at that indifferent rock where she used to live and took a couple small sips, marveling at the way the drink traveled through her body like light.  
  
When John found her, like she supposed she knew he would, he was weighed down with something. “There’s no air out there, you know,” he said casually, sitting down next to her. The way he slid onto the floor, all long limbs and exhaustion, like a climb. A tumbling branch. She considered his words and remembered his parents. His father died in space, unable to breathe.   
  
“I know,” she said, really looking at him. It was hard to reconcile the still beauty of the outside ( _space, call it space_ ) with the cruel ways it had been used by his people. But space was indifferent. It was constant.  
  
She leaned her face into his collarbone, like she was prone to doing lately. They all had access to water and often smelled of soap. It was an odd, hard-edged scent, but she could smell him beneath it, what his skin really smelled like and always did.  
  
And then, sleepily, a quarter drunk, she nestled her head into the crook of his neck, looking back out at the ground. “You don’t talk about them much,” she said, foregoing a segue. "Your parents."   
  
“Not much to say.”  
  
“Liar,” she said, softly. He chuckled.  
  
“Caught me. There’s a lot to say.” His hand idly stroked her hair, a few strands of which had come loose from her braid. “I’ve said it all. It doesn’t change anything.”  
  
“No,” she said, looking at the ground, the earth, the place where her brother had died and many other people too but mainly her brother, “it doesn’t.”  


* * *

  
It was again in the middle of the night that—  
  
Well, there was an observatory, and still is. The door closes and the window is such a large mouth into space that Echo still expresses worry about falling through the illusion, in spite of the fact that the glass is sturdy and can be leaned on and punched and attacked. It has been. They’ve all tried to yell at the void using this window as a conduit.   
  
Raven suggested it once, half-joking but probably not at all, and Emori had looked up from her work at the control panel, turning the notion around in her head.  
  
“You guys should try it. There’s nothing hotter than the stars,” the other girl had said, other self-satisfied half-joke, and then abruptly turned back to her work. Raven was like this lately; determined and focused, with strange bouts of humor creeping in. It was the softness of space. It was the pressure of close quarters.  
  
A few days later, Emori couldn’t sleep because she could sense another dream coming on, and she could feel the harsh rumble of John’s nightmare next to her. A soft, familiar whimper, too, that meant he was approaching wakefulness.  
  
“John,” she whispered, and he cracked one eye open, just one, and something inside of her softened, still, to see the dark sliver of blue.   


* * *

  
“I hate space,” he said, his voice petulant. The large maw of the window was unwavering in its honesty but he’d still agreed to come here with her, and she was grateful.  
  
“But you don’t hate me,” she pointed out.  
  
“Oh, so you’ve picked up on that?”  
  
She grinned and turned around, back facing the window. Then she kissed him with a waking urgency, the way she’d kissed him between cons, the way she’d kissed him when she was caught in the city of light but still so happy to see him in Polis, him and his body and his clouded smile the only warmth for miles. He responded with some surprise (their lovemaking these days was slow, luxurious, stretched out, taking its gentle time) but wrapped his hands around her waist, pressing her body to his.  
  
“Space really gets you hot, huh,” he said between kisses, and leaned down to nuzzle her neck, hand slipping under her shirt to graze the warm skin of her back.  
  
“Shut up,” she said, and he laughed into her throat. “Press me against the glass.”  
  
“Press you—?”  
  
“Against the glass,” she said. She tried to summon her commanding voice, the one that she knew made him weak and hungry, and his eyes turned sharp as he walked her backwards until she hit the window with a thud. It was understood, when her mood was like this: she didn’t want to be gentle, or treated gently.  
  
His kisses at her throat turned sharp and she whined as she arched into him, letting him nudge a knee between her thighs. She tugged his hair, a little shorter now, and he tugged hers in turn, twisting his fingers into it. He pulled away from her briefly.  
  
“I don’t see you arguing,” he said, looking down at her, fingers still wrapped in her hair, almost reverent, almost violent. A grin lingered on his mouth. “Space turns you on.”  
  
“I like how it makes us small,” she said. The words were very nearly stuck in her throat. She couldn’t make him understand, but she could give him this. She brought her hand to his face and stroked the panes of his cheek with her fused fingers. If she could bring him a moment of light, just a wink of it— if she could bring it to him over and over, as often as possible, moments of love in all this uncertainty— because of this uncertainty, held tight against this uncertainty—   
  
“John,” she said, and he fixed his gaze on her mouth and closed the space between them. She felt him grow against her and they scrambled to peel fabric from their bodies, until he was pressed against her again and the glass was cold at her back. He was hard against her hip, unmoving, his fingers mapping a line down her throat to her shoulder. It must have been strange for him: the discomfort of space outside and her body in front of it. Maybe she wanted to give him a conduit for the uncertain rage.  
  
In any case, he was waiting, eyes on her, and the space outside was watching.  
  
“John,” she said again, “fuck me.”  
  
And so he did, the movements urgent, like he was finding something deep inside of her.  
  


* * *

  
  
Emori likes the changing colors of the planet below. She doesn’t call it hers, and that’s okay. She doesn’t know if anything is truly hers— this machine of a home, or the place where she lived and traveled with her brother below, or her memories of the empty violence in the desert, or the deaths she caused, or the knowledge of machines she is slowly building in herself, or the heart thumping around in her chest.  
  
She saw a picture of what they look like once. Hearts. Those things that spin the blood around dutifully, keeping the machine active. She saw it in one of Harper’s medical books, an illustration in red and deep purple. A bit shriveled and strange, a planet unto itself. And, like a planet, something that can heal, with time.  
  


**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
>  
> 
> I am not a nihilist but I guess I've decided Emori might be.
> 
>  
> 
>  


End file.
